WWIV

Animal

Kind of friendly. I am broken.

Machines can cease to function.

Through the wreckage and the cracks

Poems ooze to life.

When verses are articulate,

Though badly punctuated,

And express the animal,

The soul – they're beautiful.

Shakespeare had a long career

Doing nothing else.

2-28-14

 

Contrast

The boisterous, loud and vulgar mob

Is laughing. Are they happy?

Here in Denny's, 4 a.m. -

Do not glance at them.

Just several hours ago I lay

On firmness wrapped in softness

And quiet in my cluttered room,

And slept. Sweet paradise.

In a week I hope I'll have

Another MP3,

Not defective. Music will

Obliterate the noise.

2-28-14

WWIV

The weapons of the planet's next

War will supersede

Anything used heretofore,

Permanent and lethal.

After that, the planet's wars

Will probably be fought

With broken sticks and rocks by mutants

Crawling from a cave.

2-28-14

 

Bad

I was trash and lots of sex,

And passing bad intentions,

Like a robot gone bizarre

With a faulty program.

Why do I perceive the past

As something gay and gentle?
Everything that irks me now

I did when I was younger.

I wrecked a house and broke a heart,

Two hearts. I growled at god -

Mocking him my single most

Commendable achievement.

Alive and feral and untamed,

Escaping from a master,

I wrote verse then, and it was verse

As only angels write.

2-28-14

 

In Denny's

For a moment I was young,

Surrounded by two bodies,

Gentle, rugged, tall and calm.

I was not excited.

But like an active memory,

A concept of emotion

Took my body and my mind.

And I was not alone.

Although a man in coitus looks

Into another's soul -

A perfect touch – nothing could

Be lonelier than that.

It was the present, but it had

The weight of memory.

2-28-14

A Song For The Common Man

A Song For The Common Man

Boring isn't beautiful, but Keats

Seemed to think it made good poetry.

Shakespeare isn't beautiful or boring,

But human, deep and commonplace, like men.

Everyone has inspiration in him

If it isn't smothered by the tide

Of his parents sweeping over him

At birth, the bud pinched quickly from the stem.

No fancy words. No fancy thoughts. No music,

Perhaps the most egregious sin of all.

It's better, and the neighborhood agrees,

To die a philistine than live a faggot.

To join a gang and murder in the streets.

But if the severed bud takes root and grows

In some soil and blossoms unawares,

Another Shakespeare may be in the offing.

Never! Every seven thousand years.

Well forgotten. Yet new poetry.

The simplest poet simply tells the soul.

If crossed with madness, sickness intervenes,

The verse may be both beautiful and strange,

And still bear truths that suit the common man.

Everybody is a common man.

2-27-14

Lines (Just the mad think war's a lovely thing.)

Old Books

I found my books again. And like old friends

After years – and no one's any older -

In a sweet reunion – it was grand.

In the dust – like blue and speckled eggs

In a nest – I picked them up and looked

At the covers – too familiar,

And felt a joy akin to nothing else

Than first love unaged – forgotten years.

Can I go back and bring them out again?

Put them on the shelves and in plain view

Live again, on the verge of death,

Conscious of them both, though music plays?

2-27-14

Lines

Just the mad think war's a lovely thing.

Be wary. They are walking in the streets.

Prepossessing. See how faces change.

I won't go insane and think I'm Keats,

Though now I'm smelling odors long forgotten

On a ward in 1967.

Unable both to live or talk to people,

Deluded that instead I write good verse,

I'm amassing books of poesy.

So much trash when I am in a grave!

I am not Keats. Or Proust. Or Isherwood.

I am Hart. Joseph. Not Lorenz.

Nor did I begin as even that.

The modern world is sterile, chrome and plastic.

You don't say grave or mad or inspiration.

And Muse is in a book about the Greeks,

Read in college, tested and forgotten.

Jesus Christ, a myth that's dead and rotted

And stinks, and causes nothing but destruction,

Bigotry and death, but never beauty,

Has bested all the other deities

In a war, as god declared he would

On the eve when he was fabricated.

Hate restores my mind and sanity,

As gentle, harmless poesy does not.

No. I won't go mad and think I'm Keats,

But live and die as nobody at all.

Little Keats won't fill the vacancy.

2-27-14

 

Reading Keats

Real as rock and beautiful as heaven,

Hyperion is made of spit and paper.

I didn't read it all. I got too bored.

But La Belle Dame like water through my fingers

Was easy reading and a depth of pleasure.

2-27-14

The Silly Corpse

The Temple In The Mountains

Her god said, “Build a temple in the mountains.”

She went back to college and she studied and she learned

How to build a temple in the mountains.

When the people learned what she was doing,

They locked her on a ward for the insane

So she couldn't build a temple in the mountains.

She thought and prayed in silence.

After several days with sheets

She choked herself to death because

She couldn't build a temple in the mountains.

When they told her husband, he went mad and bought an ax

And knocked down all the icons at the altar.

And then he lay upon the floor and wept.

And Jesus wept.

2-25-14

 

The Silly Corpse

She ran the light.

Americans compete

To be the first and fastest

On the street.

I honked at her.

She glared and flipped me off.

If I'd gunned it,

She would be dead meat.

2-26-14

Wrong But Right

They will steal your money if they can,

With a lie if it's a woman,

With a fist if it's a man.

Call them thieves,

They're ready for a fight,

Completely in the wrong,

And absolutely right.

2-26-14

If you like my poems, I have books on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindles.  The paperbacks are usually $10, and the Kindles usually $1.  You can see them on Amazon by clicking books on the drop down, then typing Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

While Dying

Crazy

Why must I be crazy?

It is painful and it hurts.

And writing verse is tearing at the wound.

I never had a parent,

But a Grandpa who is dead,

And he was weak.

He couldn't overcome them.

But among my memories

A warmth I can't surpass,

He lives. And they are

Carnage in the dirt.

And things are done with fantasies

That resurrect the soul.

Unless my verse is gibberish

And I can't see the truth.

2-26-14

 

While Dying

He lay inside a coffin,

And the phrases he had read

In poetry like golden fish

In water filled his mind.

He couldn't talk to people,

But a thousand clever thoughts

Of sentiment and humor

Occupied his consciousness.

He at last was dying.

Even now he couldn't grasp it

Or accept that he would cease to be.

2-26-14

 

Hemingway

I did not like Hemingway,

Although like Gertrude Stein,

I see his gift -

Articulate and lucid.

His violence upsets me.

He's a cruel little child.

And his hateful homophobia

Directed at his mentor

Makes the Golden Boy

A silly ass.

2-26-14

Pride

For a Brit to say that Shakespeare

Is particularly his -

English – is as foolish

As Americans who claim

That Sills somehow

Reflects America.

2-26-14

Shakespeare's Words

To read the words of Shakespeare

In a constant flow of phrases,

Like water on a desert

Or shade, is more than music.

Just to change the words

And think up synonyms destroys

The beauty and the meaning,

Or reduces them to dust,

Commonplaces, sentiments and thoughts.

2-26-14

 

Sharkey 's Story

She was very lonely

Sitting in her house

Staring dull, obliquely

Through the window pane.

She went to a psychologist

Just for company,

For someone she could talk to,

Not planning to remain.

She went to see him weekly

Rather like a clock

Only just to talk.

And in several months she was insane.

1-31-13

The Wall

Breaking through the wall, the flood

Inundates my poems.

At last I start to love my poesy,

Not for reasons,

Just because I do.

My father – such a father – said

His father said to him

He'd finish on the gallows.

He did not.

Did he pass this destiny to me?

Not to me. But I'm afraid that I will

Never be a poet

To anyone except a couple friends.

Neither Keats nor Shakespeare,

With a simple sense of rhythm

And a head of concepts

I'm writing poesy.

Phrases! Phrases! Music's not my forte.

2-26-14

God And The Good Man

Magic

Drop a wad of paper in a bowl,

Pastel tissue paper. Fill the bowl

With water. Watch the paper open up

Into a fish, a clam, a rock, a shell,

Very brightly colored,

And they float inside the water.

1-20-14

Two Aphorisms

Might makes right.

That isn't true,

Although it might as well be.

Right makes might.

That's simply an illusion.

2-25-14

 

Words

The words I use are accurate,

But not the words of Keats

Or Shakespeare. Most

Especially the Bard,

Whose interesting words convey

Such interesting thoughts,

Nor separate the meaning from the sound.

2-25-14

Shakespeare

A play by William Shakespeare

Is an opera in words.

And every touching, memorable

Passage that goes deep,

That all the world can quote

Is like an aria by god.

2-15-14

God & The Good Man

God was testing him.

He had no money,

Just a cow.

An indigent itinerant

Stopped and asked for food.

He gave him all he had. The stranger

Asked him for his money.

The good man said,

“I have none. Just a cow.”

The stranger said to sell the cow.

The good man said he couldn't.

The stranger begged.

The good man sold his cow,

And handed him the money

In a little pouch that had been

Knitted by his wife.

The stranger smiled and thanked him,

Took the money and was gone.

Seven days went by. The good man

Slowly starved to death.

2-25-14

A Cat Tale

Cats and kittens like to sit in boxes

Peeking over flaps around the edge.

There they sit like little furry Sphinxes

In very small and even giant boxes

Watching everything that's going on.

But if the box is small and barely fits them,

They're even more content to sit and stare.

2-24-14

 

A Fantasy

He was walking down the sidewalk

When his leg collapsed beneath him,

Not just collapsed, but crumbled

Into chips of bone and sawdust.

One shard half in tact

Tore through his trousers.

He looked in fear and pain aghast

At the mess of maggots

Crawling through the wreckage,

Up his cuffs and down his pants.

Wild and quick he slapped his leg

To knock maggots off.

A thousand more in endless waves

Came through the rip. He sat there

On the sidewalk, horror in his eyes.

2-24-14

The Crazy Man In Denny's

The Bach Books

These are the best

And worst of my poems.

It simply can't be so.

Every book since 84

Was dipped from the same well.

The poems in these books of Bach

Are ugly/pretty, and they leave

A residue, a memory,

A trace the others don't.

Broken minds and wretched parents,

Quickly rhymed on sudden beats,

Too personal, not universal,

Are in my head an effigy

That from a gibbet sways.

2-24-14

 

The Boyfriend

Your boyfriend said he'd be right back.

It's been two thousand years.

He hasn't shown. I don't believe

I'd trust him anymore.

And in another thousand years,

That faith should atrophy.

Can this be why the world is ending?

Simple disappointment?

2-22-14

 

The Crazy Man In Denny's

If he stepped out of his madness

And saw the world he's in

And his status in it,

He'd go insane again.

2-24-14

 

The Knowers

To know but not be understanding -

There's the difference.

He thinks he knows what governs you,

But does not touch with care.

As though your heart were made of glass,

Or he saw through your head,

Such esoteric insight makes his

Soul superior.

Charlie Raub and Robert Buck!

The first in San Francisco

In 1967 was

Ophelia of the streets.

Robert some years after that

Knew the human race

Sufficient that his selfishness

Compelled you to obey.

2-24-13

 

The Lake

The still water's moving slightly

And the sun has planned a path

From its shiny center to my feet.

And I could step upon it

And walk out to the middle

And sink beneath the surface

The cold appealing surface

To the warm enclosing bottom

Of oblivion.

1966

Like a quiet river

Like a quiet river

Like a quiet river,

Little splashes over rocks -

My poesy's like music,

And the music is like Bach's.

How unlike that turbulence -

My personality -

The other thoughts and feelings

That are in my poesy.

2-22-14

A Memory

Walking out of Denny's

Thinking about George,

I was suddenly transported

To the orchards and a gorge,

A gully with no water,

Dust around the well.

Loneliness is agony,

Although I couldn't tell.

Rather like a painting -

“A person who's alone” -

The picture is indelible.

It's all the person's known.

2-22-14

 

Small Poems

My poems are not wordy, rich and grand,

But more like sand crabs leaving trails in sand.

Where the interweaving paths have led

Determines what the poesy has said.

2-22-14

The Magazine Cover

I saw it on a magazine -

“Love music once again.”

If I had a time machine

I'd gladly go back when

Music had a melody

And harmony was warm,

A singer's voice was pretty,

And poetry had form.

2-22-14

Autonomy

Man is strong and so's his b-tch,

Independent from their youth.

Darwin never burned a witch.

A Christian never told the truth.

When you're old, you are not fair.

Beat a mongrel mad, it

Doesn't need a mother's care.

Some people never had it.

Nothing on this earth makes sense.

The universe is poetry.

Some people at the world's expense

Live in total liberty.

11-23-13

 If you like my poems, I have collections on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindle.  The paperbacks are mostly $10, and the Kindles mostly $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the dropdown and then write Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Meaning

Meaning

Nobody knows and everyone's trying.

Some very nice people

Are lonely and dying.

Jesus and Socrates, broke on the rack,

Figures from history,

Will not come back.

Age is the gibbet from which we are hung.

And death to the old is a

Myth to the young.

Thinking up purposes,

Dying their hair,

Piercing their noses,

Such freedom is rare.

Freedom! The freedom

The Steppenwolf knew -

Just like the Steppenwolf -

What do they do?

Genius and talent come

Just to a few.

They blew up the Parthenon.

What was it worth?

Nothing is sacred in

Heaven or earth.

2-22-14

 

Keats' Beauty

Keats was wrong.

It isn't all sensations.

There are other beauties

For a song -

Paradox and poignancy,

Thoughts in sweet relations,

Feelings as emotions come along,

Written by a person

When alone,

Carved and fashioned from his very bone.

Rain and seas were beautiful already.

2-21-14

A Rhyme

Loesser wrote the only shows

On Broadway worth a jot,

Quick and clever, each of them,

Regardless of the plot.

And Verdi gave to Europe

All the beauty that it's got.

Puccini had a lover's warmth.

Like a constant sot,

America is staggering

Across an empty lot.

And the world – the stubborn world -

Has absolutely not

A thing but gods and bigotry.

Can the heart be bought?

I'm alone and looking on,

Unteachable, untaught.

2-21-14

Tedium

Half her head shaved,

A nail through her tongue,

Tattooed and fat -

It's good to be young!

Does she like poems? She

Doesn't like mine.

Off to the bars every

Evening at 9.

This is what Man who's

Superior to

The animals does. What else

Is there to do?

2-21-14

Sitting In Denny's

She can hug people.

I cannot do that.

I've written a volume

Of poems so fat

It's simply a pleasure

To sit and look at.

Sitting in Denny's

From 11 to 3,

I'm watching the people

Who don't seem to see,

And wondering what they

Are thinking of me.

I am a psycho

Who passes the night

Sitting in Denny's

Pretending to write.

Farewell to the middle class,

Christian and white.

2-21-14

Music

The sh-t they call music

And play in the bars,

Not overcome by the

Noises of cars.

The Christian adores it

In luxury's ease,

Deluding himself he

Has several degrees.

Though people are wise,

What have they read?

Music is finished -

Shot in the head.

In Denny's I listen

To garbage instead,

Vapid and vacant and tuneless

And dead.

Where can I go to?

The Muses have fled.

Bach in my house with

A cat on my bed.

2-21-14

If you like my poems, I have books on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle.  The paperbacks are mostly $10 apiece, the Kindles mostly $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the drop down, and type Joseph Hart Poetry on the search bar.

Midnight

A Lover's Lies

Die, death! And ancient hate

That makes me cold and rigid,

Stiff and inarticulate,

Emotionally frigid.

Gullible to any lie

That strangers can invent

Easily and on the sly

To further their intent,

To get them past impediments

And out of all demands.

Prevarication circumvents

The lover where she stands.

Even more than meaningless -

A world that's fraught with lies,

While asking deities to bless

The lover when she cries.

2-18-14

 

Midnight

No one's out at midnight

But bums out of the grave,

Beggars from the gutter

Society won't save.

The streets are dark but lamplight.

Infrequently a car

Makes the sound of silence,

Foreign and familiar,

Passing as a star.

It is not good to be there.

In the air a chill

Hurries you to shelter.

Everything is still.

2-19-14

Three Fragments

Three Fragments

A beautiful moon

Behind a wisp of clouds

Like spider webs

Across a candle flame -

And all the sky is black -

It's like the sea.

I don't like Junkets' longer poems,

Only just the sonnets.

If that much could be said of me,

I'd live a happy man.

He said it best, “Don't cry.

Life is all despair.”
I said, “There's always hope.”

But I did not believe it.

Make Believe

Hate

The hollow magic all great poems have

Regardless of the subject or the theme -

Junket's had it. Shakespeare's beautiful,

But he is more substantial than all that.

Then what poets have it? Just the dead ones.

Every phrase comes softly from the sea.

Even hate's a topic for a song

If it like a clam shell on the shore,

Is empty, unspecific. And it floats.

This is not a talent. It's disease.

Nonetheless it's what I want to write.

In someone else's verses or in mine,

When I see it, I am satisfied.

I think, “That's good.” And put the book away.

2-17-14

 

Make Believe

Make believe. The old man

Thinks he is a poet.

It gets a little tiresome.

He doesn't ask a lot.

When he writes a poem

And collars you to read it,

Just tell him that it's good,

And hand it back.

When he sells a book,

Which he very rarely does,

Shine it on

And simply walk away.

Although he's had a lot of college,

He'll tell you if you ask him,

He doesn't know a thing

Anybody needs to know.

2-17-14

Sly Truth

Sly Truth

When the truth comes slyly,

Then you are insane.

Go to see a counselor.

He will not explain.

Sitting in his office,

Confessing every sin,

Go away as baffled

As you were when you went in.

2-17-14

 

The Lunatic

Sitting in Denny's at 4 a.m. -

The lunatics are out -

He laughs and he hollers like someone were there.

An animated guy!

He's making me angry. I'd like to kick

His dumb psychotic ass!

Yet I remember when I was nuts -

As obvious as he.

The monologue ended. I'd turn and look

To see if he's still there.

But if he's touchy as well as mad,

I could be in trouble.

The waitress is taking this calmer than I.

She seems to know he's sick.

She gives him his coffee and walks away.

Benighted in the night!

2-17-14

 

Caring

She told me you don't care

Even though you say it.

Too long at the fair.

The game and how you play it.

I believe you care.

Some people never learn.

I think someone is there.

To love, but in return.

2-17-14

 

For 16 years

For 16 years or 17

I had myself a friend

Who looked forever for someone better.

She played and took the trick.

For 17 years I berated myself

Because I couldn't love.

It seems I was loving him quite enough,

And just got told to stop.

Nothing makes sense to me. 60 years.

I'm baffled as a babe.

He told me to love him. He told me to stop.

While spitting in my face.

I no longer hate her. It's worth the price

To follow her finesse.

Rather obvious, crude and dense,

It seems where I am sitting.

Getting her druthers (her only aim),

First she goes to him.

Gone at 7 and back at 5.

A stranger errant she.

2-17-14

For Celeste Goyer, Who Published It, a fragment

Pornography is just a harmless pleasure.

Statutory rape is not a rape.

And prostitution shouldn't be a crime.

Without a victim, there has been no crime.

These Christians do not care for liberty.

They never did. I think they never will.

They howl their execrations in the night.

They vilify the homosexual.

They claim to be the species god prefers.

They imagine love in what confutes all care,

Especially in what they do themselves,

And fairness in their own dishonesty.

Living Gold

Aging, warm and fair -

Playing in the streets -

Millay is lying where
I sought to bury Keats.

Keats is living gold,

But messes up my mind.

Doing as I'm told,

I more of madness find.

2-17-14

Crazy Denny's

Bedlam's come to Denny's.

Everyone is bold.

The waitresses are actors,

And no one's growing old.

My god! I hate the music

That comes from overhead.

Loud and unmelodic.

To wait for love instead.

2-17-14

TA

TA is just some funny words
I never understood.

Does it make you crazier
Or does it do some good?

This counseling for Christians

(One of them a Jew)

Has passed into oblivion.

Who knows what to do?

He went to see a doctor

(The only game in town).

Because it didn't help,

He burned the building down.

2-17-14

 

In A Hospice

Why don't people holler when they're dying?

Howl and scream and fight the madman off?

Lying in a hospice on a bed,

Folded, white and cool and stiff and clean.

But death is not a hospice. Death is dirty.

A thousand maggots crawling through your soul.

Imagine it. But do not go to sleep.

Youth is the beginning of it all.

2-16-14

 

The Illusion

A man with an illusion that he's loved,

Believing that psychologists mean well,

Is battered among rocks until they fall,

A landslide on his head. Where did the myth

Of this affection start? The family

That wished him to a grave? Perhaps in youth

Where he with pretty boys had happiness?
Cassandra who in madness said he'd be

To the world just one non-entity?

2-16-14

 

Keats

The immortal nothingness of Keats,

Like bathing among flowers with no thorns -

Fragrance, softness, colors – half asleep -

In perfect safety, harmony and peace.

This my ode to Keats is not like his

To a Grecian Urn and Nightingale -

Such magic has been stuck upon them now

That just the names evoke a poetry.

Don't let go! Just sink into a sea

Of happiness and safety for a while,

A lifetime, and a preparation for

A sweet translation to unconscious.

2-16-14

If you like my poems, I have some books on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindle.  The paperback are usually $10, and the Kindles are usually $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books, and write Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

The Beasts

Petty

My mother was quite petty.

Ridiculous in age!

He dented the spaghetti

Tin. It made her rage.

Goddamnit! Am I like her?

Can I regress and change?

Dig her up and strike her?
Withdraw and just be strange?

2-16-14

 

Mark

Her father is a sh-t. I told her so.

Injuries commencing years ago.

Promises! He makes them in his sleep.

Promises he never means to keep.

Hypnotized – a member of the herd

That loves it's daddies – she believes each word.

Up she comes with hope. Than down she falls.

Such cruelty and disillusion galls.

Instead of recognizing his abuse,

She spit out with the word that Christ would use.

And haughty with religion, knocked me dead,

And didn't hear another word I said.

The memory is distant, and it blurs.

Every man his devil. She has hers.

2-16-14

2000 Years

Christ two thousand years has run

This misbegotten planet,

Drowning witches, burning books,

Arresting folks at orgies.

Ya basta, bastard! That's enough!

Send Jesus home to heaven.

Liberate the minds of men,

And lay the ancient horrors!

Gandhi was a gentle man.

What else will recognize him?

His soul was rife with Jesus,

And they shot him in the dark.

2-15-13

The Beasts

People can be nasty

Regarding what they want.

It makes me wonder

How the beasts were raised.

Completely without talents,

Ability or skills,

It makes me wonder

What their mothers praised.

You cannot best the ogre.

He's vicious and he's mean.

And he calls himself

Humanity.

Nor can you avoid him.

He's legion and he's life,

But pin him to the cork of poetry.

2-15-14

 

Advances

Housman for his form -

Millay her gentle touch -

And Keats for his unbounded

Mad attempt at beauty -

I am going crazy.

Every day I'm older.

My poesy is changing,

Or so it seems to me.

Before when I was younger

And people made advances,

I responded eagerly,

And then they went away.

The ego of the public

Is not to be imagined!

They think I make advances.

When I never do.

2-14-14

 

Respite

Does everybody need

A mother and a god?
Sitting in a cloister

Staring at the night -

Thinking of the moon -

Following the ocean -

In my imagination

I'm sleeping on the sand.

2-14-14

Saved Feelings

Guidance

Superior knowledge.

Secure in our plight,

Looking to him in

Irrational night

For god or a father,

For certainty, right,

Some for an angel,

Others for light.

2-11-14

 

Sleep

Wake up crummy.

Don't feel safe.

And most horrific dreams.

No Keats embowered sweetness -

The reality of sleep.

Years ago when I was young

I lived for love and sleep.

I reminisce in poesy,

But I don't want it back.

My tendons ache and joints feel stiff.

The earth is my avenger.

Knowing all who injured me

Have gotten old as well.

Behind a veil it seems I dream,

Although I am awake.

In such a dream is madness

That confiscates my mind.

2-11-14

 

Talking

I'd sink in a swamp and go crazy

If I could visit with you,

Relaxed on an everyday level.

But that's what I'm hoping to do.

A couple degrees every morning -

Perhaps in an eon or two -

I'll be a commonplace person,

When loneliness, magic are through.

Nietzsche kissed horses and tippled

Companionship out of a mug.

When I'm a little less clever,

Someone may give me a hug.

2-15-14

 

Them

They are the people you give to.

They lie in the sun and smoke.

They need, and they make it a vulgar word.

They're needy and selfish and broke.

None of them made it through high school -

The ones that got in it all.

Welfare, their only achievement,

Their talents are moxie and gall.

They live on their lies and your money,

Enjoying the blessings they bring.

None of them ever did ever

A kind or unselfish thing.

2-15-14

Breaking Free

Long ago so clever

A Christian therapy,

Completely cold and loveless -

And promiscuity.

Promiscuity is fun

But there is something more

Not riddled with the cutest phrases -

Myths, the sea, a shore.

2-15-14

Saving Feelings

To put a thought in poetry -

A butterfly on cork -

Precious jewels in a safe

Where nobody can see them -

Stops the river where it is

And lets it go no farther -

Puts the fact in limbo,

Dobs it with a touch of paint -

And you proceed from there relieved

Of any further feeling -

Just a harmless memory,

Impotent and vague.

2-15-14